Budget to hit gas guzzlers hard

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War Hero

Gordon Brown is expected to raise taxes substantially on larger-engined cars in Wednesday's Budget.
Some reports suggest that road tax on the least fuel-efficient cars will double to about Â£400 a year.

Not wishing to reopen the debate on this in terms of 'the environment' (some people do need 4x4!), but does anyone know what the fine is for not paying Road Tax if caught?

Seems to me it may be a risk worth taking if less than Â£400? Especially if you have a clean licence. We all know that millions are never caught or fined, so stealth taxes like this are only going to encourage some law-abiding 4 x 4 owners to join them?

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

LE

My wife has a Landy freelander and it's co2 emissions are nowhere near as high as these twatz are saying.
A few points:

I am not a millionaire!

I am a country dweller.

No, the last time it went "off road" was not accross tesco car park!

yes it does get dirty.

If they want to tax anything why no start on the staff cars the govt use or the thousands of police cars that run their engines all the time whilst on patrol...even if they are sat up on a bridge all b*stard day!!!!!

One 747 flying fron london to new york burns approx 120 tons of fuel.....enough to keep one car going non stop for over 150 years!

LE

Thanks to the way in which the DVLA operates now, the chances of being caught for not renewing your licence are very high; you'll get an automatic Â£80 fine as soon as the computer notes that you haven't renewed your tax.

Of course, if you've never bothered taxing your vehicle, this doesn't apply, since the DVLA have no record; if you've decided to give up paying tax some time ago and cloned someone's number plates (on a taxed vehicle of similar make), then the chances are you'll not get caught; also, the poor s*d with the properly registered vehicle gets all the parking tickets and speeding fines and has to prove in triplicate that they couldn't possibly have been racing past that speed camera 25 miles away from their place of work during office hours.

If you've gone a step further, you won't have paid insurance either, yet since you're a more difficult target for Mr Brown and his colleagues than the law-abiding car owner, you stand a reasonable chance of getting away with that, the best efforts of the local constabulary notwithstanding.

(NB, not a dig at the police - in the case of my aunt, who had her numberplates cloned and was then accused of driving without insurance after 'her' car had a hit-and-run, the local constabulary were very good indeed - 'All sorted madam, as was the young..ahem... gentleman who was silly enough to get violent when we tried to point out he was being a bit naughty')

LE

Thanks to the way in which the DVLA operates now, the chances of being caught for not renewing your licence are very high; you'll get an automatic Â£80 fine as soon as the computer notes that you haven't renewed your tax.

Of course, if you've never bothered taxing your vehicle, this doesn't apply, since the DVLA have no record; if you've decided to give up paying tax some time ago and cloned someone's number plates (on a taxed vehicle of similar make), then the chances are you'll not get caught; also, the poor s*d with the properly registered vehicle gets all the parking tickets and speeding fines and has to prove in triplicate that they couldn't possibly have been racing past that speed camera 25 miles away from their place of work during office hours.

If you've gone a step further, you won't have paid insurance either, yet since you're a more difficult target for Mr Brown and his colleagues than the law-abiding car owner, you stand a reasonable chance of getting away with that, the best efforts of the local constabulary notwithstanding.

(NB, not a dig at the police - in the case of my aunt, who had her numberplates cloned and was then accused of driving without insurance after 'her' car had a hit-and-run, the local constabulary were very good indeed - 'All sorted madam, as was the young..ahem... gentleman who was silly enough to get violent when we tried to point out he was being a bit naughty')

Biscuits_AB

Guest

This whole thing is being pushed by people who just don't like 4 x 4's. 'Gas Guzzler'.....what a shZ*te expression. They're trying to get sports cars and people carriers rope in under that name as well.

LE

Is there any dispensation for those that actually need their 4x4 for work in the country? Can you get industrial status for farm use?

My folks live in the bondu way up North where, for the winter months, a 4x4 is a necessity, not a luxury. The small holding they have requires the car to smell as if it has been used to transport a tup with diarrhea (which having complained about it, it was explained, indeed, it had).

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

LE

What about those poor unfortunates who are struggling with pay rises below the rate of inflation etc?

Will all this additional tax revenue be used to subsidise the extortionate cost of public transport or will it simply be used to create further non jobs in labour controlled councils?

I'm sure the country will one day collapse under the wight of all the outreach workers paid for out of OUR taxes.

The latest scam is Labour Councillors vote themselves pay rises then make a "donation" to party coffers from their wages.

Whiter than white indeed.

They could put me in a helicopter and fly me up into the air and line up the bodies head to toe on the ground in delightful geometric patterns like an endless June Taylor dancers routineâand it would never be enough. No, I donât keep count. But you do. And I love you for it.

Old-Salt

Old-Salt

The thing is you have Gordon Brown expecting to raise taxes substantially on larger-engined cars and 4x4

When you have a 4x4 in the city compared to a 4x4 in the country it is totally different .

We live in the country and the only way to get about is by 4x4 vehicle
May be Mr Gordon brown should come down to the country in the winter months and see how people are able to travel back and for work , taking the kids to school etc

LE

What I loved was the pundit last night, forget who he was, saying everyone should buy a new fancy low-emission vehicle. Surely he should know that most of the 'CO2 footprint' or whatever the buzzword is, comes from manufacturing the car in the first place, so it's a hell of a lot 'greener' to run a 15 year old Landy into the ground, than it is to buy a brand spanking new Prius every 3 years?

Old-Salt

The dear Chancellor doesn't drive as well so has no idea of how important cars are to people nowadays,particulary in rural and isolated areas.
As is usual its going to be people on low incomes who will suffer

Old-Salt

What I loved was the pundit last night, forget who he was, saying everyone should buy a new fancy low-emission vehicle. Surely he should know that most of the 'CO2 footprint' or whatever the buzzword is, comes from manufacturing the car in the first place, so it's a hell of a lot 'greener' to run a 15 year old Landy into the ground, than it is to buy a brand spanking new Prius every 3 years?

LE

The burden of taxation has fallen hardest on low income working households.. Nice to see our incumbent Marxist / leninists sticking by their socialist principles.

I use a Sedan chair these days for environmental reasons..

All this cheap labour from the EU has it's benefits.

They could put me in a helicopter and fly me up into the air and line up the bodies head to toe on the ground in delightful geometric patterns like an endless June Taylor dancers routineâand it would never be enough. No, I donât keep count. But you do. And I love you for it.

LE

What I loved was the pundit last night, forget who he was, saying everyone should buy a new fancy low-emission vehicle. Surely he should know that most of the 'CO2 footprint' or whatever the buzzword is, comes from manufacturing the car in the first place, so it's a hell of a lot 'greener' to run a 15 year old Landy into the ground, than it is to buy a brand spanking new Prius every 3 years?

My point exactly! All about taxing the poor sods at the bottom again, and nothing at all to do with being 'Green'. By the way, NASA press release below, seeming to confirm my suspicion that it's all about the Sun's output and nothing to do with CO2. That simply wouldn't do, you can't tax the Sun but you can tax CO2 emissions to death and back....

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records

Long-term climate records are a key to understanding how Earth's climate changed in the past and how it may change in the future. Direct measurements of light energy emitted by the sun, taken by satellites and other modern scientific techniques, suggest variations in the sun's activity influence Earth's long-term climate. However, there were no measured climate records of this type until the relatively recent scientific past.

Scientists have traditionally relied upon indirect data gathering methods to study climate in the Earth's past, such as drilling ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica. Such samples of accumulated snow and ice drilled from deep within ice sheets or glaciers contain trapped air bubbles whose composition can provide a picture of past climate conditions. Now, however, a group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth's longest river.

Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity.

Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally "spotty," that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied.

"Since the time of the pharaohs, the water levels of the Nile were accurately measured, since they were critically important for agriculture and the preservation of temples in Egypt," she said. "These records are highly accurate and were obtained directly, making them a rare and unique resource for climatologists to peer back in time."

A similarly accurate record exists for auroral activity during the same time period in northern Europe and the Far East. People there routinely and carefully observed and recorded auroral activity, because auroras were believed to portend future disasters, such as droughts and the deaths of kings.

"A great deal of modern scientific effort has gone into collecting these ancient auroral records, inter-comparing them and evaluating their accuracy," Ruzmaikin said. "They have been successfully used by aurora experts around the world to study longer time scale variations."

The researchers found some clear links between the sun's activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common - one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.

The researchers said the findings have climate implications that extend far beyond the Nile River basin.

"Our results characterize not just a small region of the upper Nile, but a much more extended part of Africa," said Ruzmaikin. "The Nile River provides drainage for approximately 10 percent of the African continent. Its two main sources - Lake Tana in Ethiopia and Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya - are in equatorial Africa. Since Africa's climate is interrelated to climate variability in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, these findings help us better understand climate change on a global basis."

So what causes these cyclical links between solar variability and the Nile? The authors suggest that variations in the sun's ultraviolet energy cause adjustments in a climate pattern called the Northern Annular Mode, which affects climate in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter. At sea level, this mode becomes the North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale seesaw in atmospheric mass that affects how air circulates over the Atlantic Ocean. During periods of high solar activity, the North Atlantic Oscillation's influence extends to the Indian Ocean. These adjustments may affect the distribution of air temperatures, which subsequently influence air circulation and rainfall at the Nile River's sources in eastern equatorial Africa. When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.

Study findings were recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Old-Salt

Thats an interesting article cometcatcher.
The climate change debate that politicians and the media are force feeding us is so one sided and biased,I'm just waiting for the Govt to pass a law making climate change denial a criminal offence with a maximum 10 year prison sentence for offenders.
How the hell Gordon Brown thinks raising tax on 4x4's will make any kind of difference when China are building 5 coal fired power stations a week amazes me!!